DONALD MacLeod doffs his hat to the brave celebs and politicians who launched a campaign for an increase in funding for mental health services this week.
They were backing the push to have mental health taken as seriously as physical health.
I say brave because many of them had suffered in silence and kept their own mental health conditions a secret.
The cross-party campaign launched by former Lib Dem Health Minister Norman Lamb, Tory MP Andrew Mitchell and former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, whose own battles with depression have been well documented, was backed by celebrities such as comedians
Ruby Wax, Frank Skinner and Graham Norton and footballer Ian Wright to name but a few.
Our mealy-mouthed Tory Government were, as you would expect, quick off the mark to offer support, pointing out that government funding for mental health had increased, and now sits at £11.7 billion a year.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt went as far to say that, even though great strides have been made, a lot more could be done.
Quite what they propose to do remains to be seen, but you can rest assured that the lists of those seeking and needing mental health treatment will continue to rise as his government’s brutal austerity cuts bite home.
The Scottish Government, in their Mental Health Strategy 2012-15, claims success in the number of patients helped and the reduction in time it now takes for someone to receive treatment, but it also says there is more work to be done.
So everyone agrees there’s more to be done.
As someone who has close family members that suffer from serious mental health problems, I couldn’t agree more!
Sadly, there are not enough nurses, doctors or mental health wards available to treat the rising numbers of vulnerable, seriously- ill people.
The same can be said of the resources available for a patient’s aftercare once they have rejoined society. There are simply not enough safe, secure and, more importantly, monitored flats available.
Nor are there enough skilled social workers or dedicated mental health officers.
The decimation of council budgets has seen to that.To read more about the NHS, click hereSo while I support any campaign that highlights mental health equality I am very cynical at both governments’ responses.
Not enough, as they say, is being done and I totally agree with them that they could do better.
And, in order to do better, they have to put a lot more of our money where their mouths are and spend millions, if not billions on mental health treatment and patient care and aftercare.
What they have in place, at the moment, is a complete joke, and a bad one at that.
And, while I’m at it, what idiot thought it a good idea to remove a psychiatric patient’s right to smoke or vape in an enclosed outdoor area at a hospital?
Crazy PC nonsense.
For most of those patients, having a ciggie is all they live for and now that right has been taken from them, it’s like pouring petrol on a lit bonfire.
And yet even convicted felons are still allowed to smoke, but not those who, through no fault of their own, have been put in the care of the state.
It’s tantamount to state torture, certainly not patient care and should be stubbed out.
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